10 Movie Biopics That Desperately Need To Happen

Fantasy Casting: Frieda Pinto (early years)

Mother Teresa offers a more interesting story than you might think, but only if they do warts and all.

She’s most famous as a caregiver, as one of the Catholic church’s modern symbols of goodness in the world. However, a movie which only shows this side of her would not only be deeply boring, it would be whitewashing her controversial legacy. With 2014’s The Letters, recouping only $1.4 million of its $20 million budget, it’s already happened too.

There’s no denying she did some magnificent work when she was alive. Founding shelters and soup kitchens for the homeless, the terminal, and those dying of AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis. However, she was criticised for the terrible and dirty conditions of these facilities, especially as she gained great personal fortune in her latter years.

Firm anti-abortion stances and her reported forcing of deathbed conversions for the dying have been met with staunch criticism, as has her belief that suffering was necessary.

This went beyond a theological belief and apparently stopped her from prescribing painkillers, as documented in Christopher Hitchen’s controversial documentary, Hell’s Angel.

Frieda Pinto definitely has the range for such a complex character, but possibly only in her early years.